Dear Jose

Dr. Nick

By James Lawton:

Dear Jose,

Not so long ago, when you were a figure of hope rather than darkness, you said you were a star in your own movie. We could all enjoy that; it implied fun and celebration of outstanding deeds. It even added a little to the gaiety of the football nation. But now we have a better idea of the kind of movie you had in mind.

From where you are sitting, in the penthouse of your mind, you may not have noticed that it is turning into a grotesque mix of Sweet Smell of Success and Citizen Kane.

You have blown it, Jose; not in terms of column inches or television exposure or advertising spin-offs or security at the heart of your oil-rouble empire, but in the regard of all those who long for new messiahs of the game, men like Busby and Stein who gloried in their teams and their achievements and didn't scramble in such unseemly fashion to be at the heart of the reflected glory.

To tell you the truth, Jose, your current performance would look bad enough on reality TV.

You have jettisoned style for some chintzy version of celebrity for its own sake. Some woolly-minded observers say that your antics provide a valuable service to the team, that it deflects attention from them, allows them to go about their relentless work. Well, here's a fact: I never saw a great football man, and this includes Ferguson and Wenger, who willingly tried to grab the attention from their players, not on occasion but as a matter of carefully calculated course.

You know why? Because they are football men to their bones and they know that their great glory will always be the performance of their players. That's why they are so excitable and natural on the touchline. Wenger can be a cold fish at times, God knows, and he has that reputation among rival managers, but he doesn't pose, he bares his hopes and his fears and he doesn't turn everything into his own glory - and if Ferguson was not ready to salute his team, and express his gratitude, why would he run along the touchline like some demented schoolboy in the tuck shop when United achieve something extraordinary?

The harsh view of your own self-absorbed act must be that it can only be explained by your own lack of a significant playing career.

You never knew the cheers from the terraces, and now it is presumably not enough for you to shape great achievement through your talent for coaching and plotting a set of winning tactics. Now you have to plunder the glory of your players while it is white-hot.

The last time I wrote to you it was, believe it or not, in a spirit of avuncular concern. I thought, like so many others weary of the back-biting and self-interest of Ferguson and Wenger, you were a star on the cusp of shining a brilliant light on English football and that all you needed to do was rein in the cockiness, not entirely but to a certain pleasing degree, and then march on to only the heavens knew where along the peaks of achievement.

It was in that phase when you were still capable of wit rather than appalling bombast, but a lot of people know better now. It has become apparent you don't know the difference between a feisty stance and sickening control freakery. We could not know back then you would soon be saying it was all right to ruin the reputation of a referee with an outright lie, and that you were capable of the kind of boorish performance you put in at Highbury on Sunday.

Presumably you thought you were being smart, even masterful, storming off down the tunnel like that without offering a hand to the vanquished Wenger, and then hurling abuse at the Sky TV people for their "crime" of rerunning shots of Michael Essien's disgusting tackle on Dietmar Hamann a few weeks ago.

You said that Barcelona, your next opponents in the Champions' League, thanked Sky. Wrong, everybody who cares for the morality of football and who isn't always bowled over by the bite of their analysis of their own flagship product, thanks them. They showed up the bruising cynicism that is growing at the heart of your all-conquering team: the £24m signing whose function is becoming increasingly apparent. Essien has talent, no doubt, but against the frail young things of Arsenal's midfield his essential role was highlighted with gut-wrenching clarity. He was there to bully, and no doubt he should have been sent off for his fouls on Lauren and Robin van Persie.

Your team are becoming dauntingly efficient but with each machine-like victory they are becoming a notch more charmless, and in this they are only keeping pace with you.

To be fair, you are far from the first and certainly will not be the last football manager to develop a siege mentality. It was long a basic plank of Ferguson's success, and Wenger has seen more conspiracies than the command posts at MI5 and the CIA. But if their positions were often absurd, if all grace melted at moments of victory and defeat, let's be honest, they never quite carried the baggage you have had to haul to your position of power in English football.

They didn't have to confront the unease which would have greeted any Chelsea success even if you had displayed endless layers of charm and your boss Roman had come over as a merely well-heeled version of Peter Ustinov. But the fact is whatever Chelsea achieve there will be the worry that success has been underpinned by unprecedented and wealth - resources taken from a country where the majority of the population live lives of hardship unimaginable in all parts of this country, let alone the Fulham Road.

So, Jose, there are unanswerable misgivings about the crowning of Chelsea as the undisputed masters of English football. This doesn't prevent admiration for the strength of your work, and the team ethic you have developed at Stamford Bridge. You have done it with a skill which has been at times awe-inspiring. But admiring is not the same as celebrating, or even liking, and anyone beyond your own support who says this is not so is spinning a line.

What it really means is that there is an obligation on you to perform with a lot more understanding of your highly privileged situation. If you don't, if you carry on in the style you displayed at Highbury, the result will be beyond speculation. Even your victories will not inculcate the envy you imagine, because all football supporters are not fools, and a recent visit to Stamford Bridge - for a grinding victory over unglamorous Middlesbrough - confirmed the suspicion that if Chelsea's fans cannot quite believe their luck, if they are pleased with the power of their club, it does not express itself in the kind of joy which is so tangible in places like Anfield and Old Trafford and, in the not so ancient good days, Arsenal.

You will probably hate this, but there is a model you shouldn't ignore, and his name is Rafael Benitez.

Your scorn for his Liverpool is not so convincing. Admittedly you have a series of victories, but they have outsmarted you in Europe and please, as a matter of urgency, drop the fiction that they didn't score against you in that European Cup semi-final at Anfield. The goal was awarded, it is on the record, and if it hadn't been, Liverpool, the whole world could see, were due a penalty and the sending-off of your invaluable goalkeeper Peter Cech.

That's the kind of reality you have to absorb if you are going to win the respect which your achievements are due. You may not know it, but Benitez is drawing a lot of neutral admiration. He isn't backed by seamless millions, he doesn't sneer at the rest of the football world, he doesn't tell lies about referees, he just gets on with the job of building a football team.

There will be quite a bit of unpatriotic support for Barcelona, too, when you collide with them again in the Champions' League.

This isn't pure envy, Jose. It comes from the feeling that you bent the truth terribly when you last met Barcelona, and that victory came through a most cynical foul by Ricardo Carvalho on their goalkeeper. Your silence on that was noted by those who believe in the old truth that these things have a way of levelling out.

One last point: the Barcelona of Ronaldinho and young Lionel Messi play beautiful football. It has brilliance and charm. It can lay a hand on the hearts of the unattached. It is a sad truth that your current affect is one of repulsion.

Yours in sport,

James Lawton

whiskeyman

before I read this, who's James Lawton?

Dr. Nick

Journo. You'll have heard him on TodayFM's last word and can read him in the indo. He's the chief football correspondant for the London Independent.

blastman

I think he's the chief sports correspondent (at least that was the title they gave him in that recent documentary about George Best on $ky One).

Good article. I think there is a definite change in Moaninho's disposition, and I think he's stepped over the line from cockiness to out-and-out arrogance.

mchurl

very good article and imo a ot of his points are true. JM has really become too involved in building up himself and this has helped to cause a lot of hatred of chelsea. He has been very successful on the football front so far and undoubtly will continue to be successful but he should really start to praise his team more than he praises himself.

wheres me jumpa

james lawton is a fantastic journalist imo. i have always been a fan of his piece in the indo. he always seems to get it right unlike that other "letter" writting fool in the sunday world.

growler

I think Mr Lawson should take some pills to try and curb his arrogance and egoistic high opinion of himself, take a few moments over Christmas to reflect on whether Jose Mourinho could really give a flying f*ck about what some journalist thinks of him , and consider whether JM's role at Chelsea was / is to entertain the British football supporting public or to just be a nice guy in all circumstances. "spirit of avuncular concern" , what a condescending prat, no doubt he is qualified to advise JM due to his well documented success on the footballing management stage, oops, no he isn't, he's a pen pusher with a misplaced sense of importance.

He never saw a "great footballing man" grab attention from his players ! WOW, no wonder, journos loved having semi-literate players sent out to do press conferences certain that they could get a misplaced quote, sow a seed of doubt, stir dissent, put words into their mouths etc. JM doesn't allow this to happen and suddenly this twunt thinks he's not a footballing man ! LOL

Maybe he's worried that if more managers become actively hostile towards the media he might have to write about FOOTBALL, particularly about what happens during the 90 odd minutes on the pitch rather than devoting pages to Christmas cards, handshakes etc. God forbid, it might become evident that he doesn't have a clue.

And then this so called expert has the temerity to call into question Romans ownership of CFC because he comes " from a country where the majority of the population live lives of hardship unimaginable in all parts of this country, let alone the Fulham Road." but qualifies this remark by implying it would be ok if JM and RA were nicer , Boggling.

But to top it all off, the ideal football manager, all round nice guy, paragon of virtue, professionalism and probably the real santa is Rafa Benitez, the man who decided staying in Japan to watch the final of a meaningless competition against 3rd rate opposition , was more important than his own Dad's funeral, WTF !


Obviously a Gooner and he won't be getting a Christmas card from me.

Thanks for posting this Dr. Nick, cured my hangover. :-)

Lemlin

I think its a joke the way he is attacking Mourinho. You could say all of the same just as easily about Sir Alex Ferguson and Wenger, or alot of football managers.

Dr. Nick

Lemlin wrote:

You could say all of the same just as easily about Sir Alex Ferguson and Wenger, or alot of football managers.

....Rafa Benitez not included I assume?

Davei141

Growler wrote:

But to top it all off, the ideal football manager, all round nice guy, paragon of virtue, professionalism and probably the real santa is Rafa Benitez, the man who decided staying in Japan to watch the final of a meaningless competition against 3rd rate opposition , was more important than his own Dad's funeral, WTF !

What a sickening cheap shot.

Aquos76

What an excellent article. Every thing he points out it the truth and he is also spot on about Rafa Benitez.

cruiserweight

growler wrote:

But to top it all off, the ideal football manager, all round nice guy, paragon of virtue, professionalism and probably the real santa is Rafa Benitez, the man who decided staying in Japan to watch the final of a meaningless competition against 3rd rate opposition , was more important than his own Dad's funeral, WTF !

Rafa Benetiz stayed in Spain after he found out even if he had of left he would not make it back in time for the funeral!

liverpoolfc.tv wrote:

Rafael Benitez today spoke for the first time about the sad death of his father Francisco earlier this week and vowed to throw himself into his work to help him get through this difficult time.
Benitez heard of his father's death in the build-up to Thursday's World Club Championship semi-final against Deportivo Saprissa, but was unable to return in time for the funeral.

He now plans to travel to Spain to see his mother and the rest of his family upon Liverpool's return from Japan.

Benitez told Liverpoolfc.tv: "I was in Madrid a couple of times because my father has been ill for the last few months.

"I was talking to my mother, sister and brother when my father died. We tried to go there but in Spain you do not have the time. They couldn't delay the funeral.

"I couldn't go so I decided to stay here. I will go and see my mother next week so for me it is perhaps better to concentrate on working. You can be very upset but if you are working sometimes you can just think about your work. My mother is there though and I will try to be with her as soon as possible.

"The only thing I can do now is try to do my best for my team and think about my father."

Jose would be proud of your cheap shot

LegacyUser

Rafa Benitez is such a slick dude. I am such a huge fan of him. I really like him as a manager and a person.

Lemlin

Dr. Nick wrote:

....Rafa Benitez not included I assume?

Nope, Benitez not included.

The Muppet

The article smacks of sour grapes to me. He slates Mourinho for his silence on the carvallio tackle, would Wenger act any differently? The source of Chelsea's wealth is nothing new , why raise it in this article as it has nothing to do with Mourinho?

Typical British press, build them up and knock em down.

chiller

Lemlin wrote:

I think its a joke the way he is attacking Mourinho. You could say all of the same just as easily about Sir Alex Ferguson and Wenger, or alot of football managers.

i agree with noel 4 once

Thanx 4 The Fish

I too agree with Noel, alot of managers are along that line Steve Bruce outside the regulars included in that.